


Yesterday I Was Clever

by Lanerose



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Marielda Spoilers, Post-Marielda, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-02 22:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16795738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanerose/pseuds/Lanerose
Summary: Ethan is waiting for his brother to come home.  Begins post-Memoriam College and continues past the end of Marielda.





	Yesterday I Was Clever

The Edmund who returns from Memoriam College is not the same Edmund who went to it. There are, of course, the obvious physical injuries to contend with, but their newly acquired medic Miss Salary is ready and willing to take care of those. The psychic damage is equally obvious, but not so easy to heal. 

The Hitchcock brothers have always relied on one another to bring back their calm and mental acuity. They have never gone more than a day without sharing what they have seen with one another, if only because each needs to know all the details of what’s happened in order to keep up their façade of being one and the same. It’s a rare day when either of them chooses not to explain until the morning, because details get lost, are faded and not so razor-sharp after the night’s rest. So Ethan can tell from the first that it’s been an unusual day when Edmund returns without comment to their room, but he doesn’t start to worry then.

The following day, it’s clear that Edmund won’t be up to teaching his morning dancing class. He half-heartedly stirs when Ethan prods at him, reminds him that technically this morning’s class is Edmund’s obligation. Edmund barely seems to hear him when he warns that one of them needs to go or they’ll be late. Edmund is barely there at all, it seems, when Ethan dresses in his stead and makes his way to teach, guaranteed to be a minute or two late. Still, Ethan doesn’t worry. It was a long night and his brother was wounded. He’ll be fine after some rest.

Then Caroline Fair-Play approaches him after class, waiting back for a private word when all of the other dancers have gone, and says, “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” says Ethan, wondering what brought this on, “how are you?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline sighs, casting a searching glance over him. “Just, after yesterday….”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Ethan replies, confused. This is the moment in which Ethan begins to worry, standing in their school with someone who has somehow learned enough to be a concern and whom his brother has not warned him against. He pointedly glances at the door as a means of distraction and to buy time to sort things out. Caroline crosses the room and closes it sharply.

“Yesterday…” Caroline starts, and stops. “I still haven’t found Carolyn. Do you know what happened to her?”

“No,” says Ethan, “I’m sorry.”

“Look,” Caroline says, stepping closer, “I know that you’re a little annoyed that we were only paying one tuition for the two of us because we were secretly twins, but if you think about it, there’s only ever one of us in class, so it wouldn’t be right for us to pay two tuitions, and if it’s that big a deal I can give you the money, but I really need your help to figure out what happened to my sister.”

Oh, Ethan thinks clearly. Oh dear.

“Caroline,” Ethan says carefully, “when was the last time that you saw Carolyn?”

“When was - ?” Caroline tilts her head and squints at him. “Hitchcock, you were _there_. The last time I saw her was when you triggered the trap she’d put on your sword and she ducked out of the library. Just before Rector Sabinia showed up. “

Oh dear, Ethan thinks again, recalling the sword that was missing from his brother’s side. Oh dear.

Caroline looks suddenly worried and grabs his arm. “You don’t think that Rector Sabinia got her, do you?" 

Ethan has three problems in answering this question. The first is that he barely knows who Rector Sabinia is – he’s got a half-formed impression of a nun and not much else to go on. The second is that he can’t understand the implications of the way Caroline says “got her,” and depending on how bad that is, and given that Caroline has told him the missing woman is her twin, his response has the potential to make her very upset. The third, of course, is the problem that he has had all along, which is that Edmund has given him absolutely no context on any of this, so he doesn’t know what Hitchcock would think would have happened.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he temporizes. “Yesterday was kind of a long day, and – “

“Oh, that’s right!” Carolina exclaims, releasing him. “I’m so sorry, I – “

She stops, and grabs his arm again. Ethan doesn’t realize for the first moment that she’s watching his face very carefully, so his wince comes just a bit too late to be convincing. Caroline shoves his sleeve up, staring at the unmarred flesh.

“Oh my god,” she says, “after all the shite you gave me yesterday, you were secretly twins the whole time, too!”

There’s a moment where he could probably deny it, but Ethan gets distracted by the idea of Edmund giving someone shit for running the exact same scam that they were running and wishing he could have been there to see it. When he looks up, Caroline’s face is set with the certainty of someone who knows she’s gotten it right and will no longer be dissuaded.

“Listen, Caroline,” Hitchcock says, “I’ll level with you, but you’re going to have to answer some questions for me, too, all right?”

“Sounds like fair play,” says Caroline, “and that is my name, after all.”

“Good.” Hitchcock replies. “Yes, we’re secretly twins, too. My brother was with you yesterday. Tell me what happened and I’ll tell you as best I can what I think happened to your sister, all right?”

“I knew it!” Caroline looks triumphant momentarily. It is in that instant that Ethan realizes just how deep the slump of her shoulders has been this morning. Her carriage is never all that graceful, which has made her a poor dance student, but today it is falling forward and rounded shoulders that return far too quickly. “Your brother didn’t tell you?”

Ethan winces. “He’s a bit tired, is all.”

“A bit tired?” Caroline frowns. “I guess that isn’t hard to imagine. He had a really rough day.”

“Rough _how_ , exactly?” Ethan asks.

“I don’t know all of it,” Caroline says, “since I was only there at the end. But he said something about being there to take the test, and getting beaten up by a priest. He told me that my sister rescued him, and he gave her his sword and sent her to help his friends in the library.” 

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, he thought she was me, or maybe us, and I guess he was kind of right. I don’t know,” said Caroline. “Anyway, I found him in Rector Sabinia’s chamber, and there was water and books, and Rector Sabinia showed up and he said he had a dream of Marielda destroyed, I think? But then the Black Slacks were fighting outside and Rector Sabinia had a void instead of a face and was chasing us from the heat and the dark, and we were praying but we were running? And there was lock-picking and fire and it all just went bad and my sister is missing and could you please just try to help me?”

Ethan took a moment to try and process, but there were too many questions flying through his mind to ask a coherent one. 

“We’re going to need to go and unpack all of that a little more, but for now, what happened with your sister?” Ethan said eventually, picking the easiest follow-up question. 

“That was when we were in the library. She’d done something to your - his sword, and it exploded when he drew it, and she ran away.” Caroline looked down. “We heard her cursing, and the next thing that happened, Rector Sabinia was coming into the library.”

“Oh,” said Hitchcock, resisting the urge to follow it with condolences that were almost certainly due. Instead, he said, “well, there’s really no way to know if she hasn’t come home yet.”

“Has your brother come home yet?” Caroline asks.

“Of course,” Ethan says, but there’s a rising doubt in his mind that his breezy confidence cannot hide. He considers a moment, and says, “Why, I bet you he’ll be back to teaching first thing tomorrow.”

Edmund does not go back to teaching the next day, nor the day after that. He exits their room only for the restroom. Ethan brings food and drink with him, sitting beside the bed his brother is lying in. At the end of the second day, when all offerings have been declined, Ethan puts his chair between the wall his brother has been facing and the bed, and sticks a sandwich in Edmund’s hand.

“Come on,” Ethan says, “people will be able to tell us apart if I’m the only Captain Hitchcock who eats.”

Edmund doesn’t laugh, but he does take a few small bites before putting the sandwich down. Progress.

Ethan doesn’t tell Edmund what Caroline had told him about that day at Memoriam College. Edmund still hasn’t told Ethan that there are two Fair-Plays, so Ethan figures that it’s only fair. There’s something more to it than that, as well, and Ethan can’t quite put his finger on the shape of it, but there’s something Caroline didn’t know that’s made everything somehow worse for Edmund.

To distract himself from the stress of Edmund’s continued silence, Ethan takes to betting on when Edmund will leave his room. He loses significant money and it’s somehow worth it even on the day that he loses a full coin, because he goes back to the room and yeah, Edmund still hasn’t left it, but he at least ate the whole meal Ethan had brought for him.

One day, Edmund spends the night tossing about. Ethan is concerned at first, but Edmund gets up in the morning and actually leaves the room. For a few hours, Ethan is nothing but pleased, sure that his brother is finally mending.

“So,” Edmund says that evening, “what do you say we go steal something from Samothes?”

Ethan goes right back to being concerned. Captain E. Hitchcock has always been willing to part a fool from his money, but they’ve never considered Samothes a fool before, and frankly, Ethan isn’t sure that he does now.

“I mean, we’d need a good plan,” Ethan temporizes, but his brother clearly hears a yes in his tone even if he hasn’t said it out loud, because a grin slides across Edmund’s face. Ethan is so relieved to see it that he would do just about literally anything, including trying to steal from a god, to keep that expression on his brother’s face. Which, apparently, is what he’s going to have to do.

“The others are already working on the plan,” Edmund replies. “We’re going to steal a train again.”

“Again?” Ethan responds, a grin rising unthinkingly to his face. “Well. It might even go better than the last time.”

“Might even, at that,” Edmund says, and damn, but Ethan’s going to do it with them. There’s something not quite truthful in the way that Edmund turns quickly after getting his agreement, something that hints at something unsaid, but Ethan can’t parse it. He’ll worry about it when they get there, he supposes.

Except that that was a terrible plan. After they are surprisingly welcomed into Samothes’ volcano, and taken to be given alternate clothing, Edmund returns and is not wearing the same thing as Ethan. Ethan casts his memory back and tries to remember the last time that they wore different clothing. He doesn’t. 

Not an hour later, Ethan is standing at the edge of a pit, looking down at his brother. His brother, who is telling him that they have come not to steal but to kill, and to kill a god at that. Ethan wonders how a person whom he had known so completely as he knew himself could change so quickly in such a short time, except that he can feel himself changing drastically, radically in this instant where everything he thought he knew is being pulled away from him, and maybe he doesn’t wonder because he learns instead.

It’s too hard to think. He walks away instead, straight to the place he – they – were always headed.

It seems to take no time at all to arrive at the mansion. One minute he is staring down at his brother and his friends getting ready to kill a god, and the next he is standing before a door. He knocks, and it opens.

“Well,” says Samol, “I was wondering when you boys were going to visit.”

Ethan follows him in. Samol shows him to a room and tucks him into bed like Ethan was his own child. He leaves the room and returns with a cup of tea, waiting patiently for Ethan to drink it all. Ethan still has nothing to say. Samol strokes his head until he falls asleep.

The following morning, Ethan wakes up more comfortable than he has ever been in his life. The shades are translucent enough to let the warmth of the day reach him even as they keep brightness of the sun at bay. The air has a comforting scent of sandalwood, the bed cradling him ever so slightly. He pushes the duvet aside and makes the bed the same way that Captain Hitchcock always has, dresses, and steps out. Someone is frying bacon nearby. Ethan starts in that direction, glancing into an open room across the way as he does so. It is a mirror image to the one he has just emerged from, and he knows without asking that it is meant for Edmund.

“Your brother’s on his way,” Samol says as he places a meal before Ethan, settling him at the small round table. Ethan takes a bite of literal food from the gods and the phrase gains new meaning as the taste explodes across his tongue. Samol sits across from him, apparently waiting for a response.

Ethan thinks it over, and nods.

“Okay then,” Samol says, sipping his coffee. There is an air about him of infinite patience that Ethan wishes he himself had.

Edmund should have left within a day or so of Ethan’s departure, if he knows anything about Edmund. He starts to wonder if he does when Edmund fails to arrive that first day, or the second. 

On the third day, he sits across the breakfast table from Samol again and asks, as Samol is sipping his coffee, “Are you sure my brother’s coming?”

Samol swallows and sighs, setting his cup down with a delicate _clink_ on the table.

“Child,” he replies, “have a little faith.”

Samol spends that day as he often does, playing music in the garden. Ethan spends it sitting in the mansion’s front window, watching the path anxiously. He is just preparing to turn away, dusk beginning to steal the light from the sky and making it harder to see, when a horse with a rider appears on the horizon.

The horse is moving slowly, barely a trot. The man sits upon his back awkwardly, uncomfortably, as though trying to keep from being jostled by too much movement. Ethan’s fingers itch with the desire to correct the man’s seat. Then the man clears the edge of the forest, and the late afternoon’s sunlight reveals clearly that Edmund has arrived. Without thinking, Ethan sprints for the door, throwing it open in welcome.

Edmund looks terrible, bandages at his throat obscuring a wound that might still be bleeding a bit given the rose tint showing at their middle. He is covered in dust, weary from the road, and thin in a way they have not been since childhood. Still he looks up, and as he spots Ethan standing in the doorway, Edmund’s lips twitch involuntarily upward for a moment.

Ethan can feel his mouth make the same motion.

His brother is finally coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~ Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi
> 
> ~ ~ ~
> 
> So I listened to Marielda prior to / during a recent long train trip and wrote most of this while listening to the Marielda soundtrack on a train in half-lighting at midnight, so I'm leaving it in the present tense to keep the immediacy of the mood that I felt writing it. I might change that at some point, but I'm keeping it for now. Anyway, I haven't listened to the rest of the podcast yet (started Autumn but the audio is a little rough, y'all) so please don't spoil anything! Other than that, comments/criticism absolutely welcome.


End file.
